Disclosed is a method and system for directing a person to a desired location. In a more specific embodiment, there is disclosed an electronic system operationally configured to visually direct person(s) along a path to a desired location. In a further embodiment, the electronic signage is used to personally direct a person to a location desired by the person in a distributed building or campus.
A person may face difficulty in navigating a complex establishment, in particular when the layout of the establishment is not familiar. Persons daily face difficulty in finding many locations, such as a particular room for surgery in a hospital, a particular office in an office building, a unique facility on a college campus, and the location of items sought for purchase. A person seeking a location in, or item stored in, a particular establishment may opt to navigate by way of directional signs placed at strategic locations in the establishment. A person seeking a location alternatively may seek verbal instructions in respect of navigation by requesting direct help from, for example, a person stationed at the front desk of the establishment. In some cases, a person seeking directions may be given a map of the establishment which may be used as a navigational tool to reach a desired location.
Electronically-facilitated directional systems that guide travel are known.
One electronically-facilitated directional system employed in factories and institutions is the automated mail and item delivery system. Such automated directional mail and delivery systems may be based on wire guidance systems with bar coding, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, or other identification sources being used to indicate various destinations. Such systems may employ vehicle intelligence along with a central or host computer.
Bar codes are codes by means of which information (e.g. a sequence of digits) can be presented in an optically-machine-readable form, each of a plurality of basic elements which are available to constitute the information in code being represented by a uniquely arranged group of marks, or spaces between marks, the marks frequently arranged in the general form of bars. RFID tags are tags which are enable to receive and respond, actively or passively, to radio-frequency queries from a transceiver. RFID tags can be either active or passive. Passive RFID tags lack their own power supply and obtain power for responding to an incoming radio-frequency scan from the minute electrical current induced in the tag, for example, in the antenna. Active RFID tags, on the other hand, have a power source that permits responding to an incoming radio-frequency scan, and may have longer ranges and larger memories than passive tags, as well as the ability to store additional information sent by the transceiver. RFID tags permit a tagged item to be read at a distance. Back scatter RFID tags permit range to be determined from a RFID reader positioned at a known location.
GPS directional systems are also known which guide a person from one location to another location. GPS is a world-wide radio navigation system, presently formed by a group of 24 satellites and their associated ground stations. GPS uses these satellites, referred to as NAVSTAR (Navigation Satellite Timing and Ranging), to calculate ground positions. The basis of GPS operation is the use of triangulation from the satellites. To triangulate, a GPS receiver measures distance using the travel time of radio signals. However, to measure travel time, GPS needs very accurate timing, plus it needs to know exactly where the satellites are in space. To solve this problem, each of the 24 satellites is inserted into a high enough orbit (12,000 miles) to preclude interference from other objects, both man-made and natural, and to insure overlapping coverage on the ground so that a GPS receiver can always receive from at least four of them at any given time.